SJ, there was never any possibility that the OLP could possibly have been re-elected this year. No scenario would have brought them from behind to beat the PC's. No governing party as unpopular as the OLP was coming into this election has ever been re-elected in Canada.

So kindly give the "the OLP could have beaten Ford but the ONDP can't" thing a rest. If Ford gets in, its solely Wynne's fault. And the polls show that an ONDP victory is a real possibility, and a far likelier possibility than an OLP comeback could ever have been this year.

"Ontario is imposing automated counting precisely at a time when others are waking up to the hazards. We have no guarantee the June 7 official election results will reflect the choices made by voters..."

With just days before Ontario’s provincial election campaign, the New Democratic Party (NDP) has surged from third to first place, raising the serious possibility that Canada’s social democratic party could win control over the country’s largest province.

Though an impressive feat, the social democratic party’s gains are not completely of their own making. Both partisans and election analysts estimated there was a path to NDP victory given voter exhaustion with fifteen years of Liberal rule and a desire to stop Doug Ford’s right-wing Progressive Conservatives (PCs).

While some of the NDP’s support is soft, the NDP has not shied away from promoting a platform that features a major expansion of the public health-care system that will finally offer pharmacare and dental care. The party is also promising to go further than the Liberals recently have on progressive labor law reform and child care. And the NDP is promising to pay for all of its new spending by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

While not a perfect platform, this election signals a shift to the left by the NDP. The party seems to finally be responding to shifts in public attitudes and the recent victories of movements for progressive causes. Right-wing media has sought to smear the party as being full of radicals; party leaders have actively defended their left-wing stances. An NDP victory in Ontario could provide a template of how a social democratic platform can push back against right-wing populism....

This is Dalton McGuinty's old riding, and his father's old riding. His brother holds this riding federally. @JohnFraserOS has now removed @OntLiberal name, colour and leader from signs. Extraordinary #onpoli@ctvottawa @CFRAOttawa

The flurry of Ontario Liberal leaflets, fake polls, shareables and signs claiming they are the strategic choice has one goal and one goal only: prevent the NDP from forming government (even if it allows Doug Ford to become Premier.)

Part of the reason Ford may beat Horwath has to do with the fact that the NDP has trouble appealing to Conservative voters.

And as several editorials today point out (eg. the one in The Globe & Mail), many Ontarians aren't happy with any of the options. They are tired of Wynne, suspicious of Ford, and not inspired by Horwath.

Horwath has run an okay campaign without making any major mistakes, but she hasn't ignited enough passion in the voters the way Jack Layton or Justin Trudeau did.

Leaders with passion are more likely to grab the attention of voters. Look at Trump vs Hillary. One of them had passion, while the other one did not. And we all know how that turned out.

It depends on who else is on the playing field. In this case Horwath needed to pick up Liberal voters and maybe some Conservatives too. Had she been fighting both the Liberals and the Conservatives then she would have to go more left. Her goal now is to replace the Liberals.

She should have been more agressive attacking Ford, his social policies, his record in Toronto, and his supposed business acumen. You don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Ford smeared the NDP so bad during the last debate, and Horwath just did not hit back hard enough. It may be one of the reasons the NDP lost the momentum, if you believe the online and IVR polls.

18% of those who voted NDP in the 2015 federal election intend to vote PC

According to this poll, most people who voted for the Liberals in the 2015 federal election will be voting for the ONDP in this election:

2015 Federal Liberal Voters:
ONDP: 39%
OLP: 35
OPC: 24
OGP: 3

These numbers show there is a huge overlap between NDP and Liberal voters. Another poll showed that if the entire electorate had to choose only between the ONDP and OPC, the ONDP would win by 60% to 40%.

She should have been more agressive attacking Ford, his social policies, his record in Toronto, and his supposed business acumen. You don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Ford smeared the NDP so bad during the last debate, and Horwath just did not hit back hard enough. It may be one of the reasons the NDP lost the momentum, if you believe the online and IVR polls.

It remains a mystery to me why the NDP and Liberal campaigns focused so little on Ford’s time at City Hall. Some suggest it would have been seen as maligning a dead man, but you needn’t even mention Rob’s name to show that Doug’s boasting of huge pain-free spending cuts does not hold water. The NDP and Liberal campaigns insist Ford will cut billions from health care and education; Ford insists he won’t. It’s a he-said/she-said situation — or it would be if Ford didn’t have a record of proudly supporting cuts at City Hall. He voted to cut bus routes, to sell community housing units, against accepting provincial funding for new public health nurses. This is a man who said he’d close a library to save money “in a heartbeat.”

It is the role of the Liberals to usher in a Conservative government, and then be the saviour after the wrecking ball does its work on behalf of the 1%. Then, nothing changes for the good during the Liberal government, ushering in another Conservative government.

Phoenix is a good example. Trudeau could have cleaned up that mess by fiat overnight. almost 3 years later, civil servants remain unpaid.

It is the role of the Liberals to usher in a Conservative government, and then be the saviour after the wrecking ball does its work on behalf of the 1%. Then, nothing changes for the good during the Liberal government, ushering in another Conservative government.

Phoenix is a good example. Trudeau could have cleaned up that mess by fiat overnight. almost 3 years later, civil servants remain unpaid.

The NDP for over a decade has been a conservative assist party, if they don't assist their electoral success and find themselves in government, they simply undertake their agenda. The evidence is abundant. Yet here the choir seems stuck on the Liberals did it note. Wonder why that is?

There is credible research that voter turnout increases with age; the largest block of voters tend to be 65 and over and the smallest block tend to be young people between 18 and 25. But the past is not all that the future holds.

The last Ontario election in 2014 saw a small increase in overall voter turnout. Notably, in the 2015 federal election voter turnout was at its highest since 1993: 57.1 per cent of young people aged 18 to 24 and 57.4 per cent of those aged 25 to 34 showed up to vote, thus increasing turnout in their age groups by 18.3 points and 12.3 points respectively.

In this provincial election, young people are the largest voting cohort, outnumbering baby boomers.

......Young Black people have told me about how they navigate their often-left-leaning politics with the social conservatism and sometimes big-C conservatism of their parents.....

The NDP for over a decade has been a conservative assist party, if they don't assist their electoral success and find themselves in government, they simply undertake their agenda. The evidence is abundant. Yet here the choir seems stuck on the Liberals did it note. Wonder why that is?

That's because the NDP is a slighly Left of Centre REFORMIST party that thinks it can change things by working within a system that naturally does what it does for the last 40 years...And from the French Revolution up to the stock market crash of 1929. These types of parties ,Social Democrats, still think they can sand off the rough edges of capitalism while maintaining it ( see: FDR). Quite clearly they are fighting a losing battle. That's why, whenever they gain power the best they can offer is a few offsets to ameliorate the effects of the system. This, of course, never matches their campaign rhetoric which inevitably leaves people angry and disaffected. And the cheerleaders of those types of parties ( Marx would have called them Petty Bourgeois types) can't see the forest through the trees on this. When you abandon the working class and all you can really offer for "change" is peacemeal reforms, you have little or nothing to offer to begin with. This is why they lose and when they win, they maintain the economic status quo...Or blame someone else for their failures...

The NDP for over a decade has been a conservative assist party, if they don't assist their electoral success and find themselves in government, they simply undertake their agenda. The evidence is abundant. Yet here the choir seems stuck on the Liberals did it note. Wonder why that is?

That's because the NDP is a slighly Left of Centre REFORMIST party that thinks it can change things by working within a system that naturally does what it does for the last 40 years...And from the French Revolution up to the stock market crash of 1929. These types of parties ,Social Democrats, still think they can sand off the rough edges of capitalism while maintaining it ( see: FDR). Quite clearly they are fighting a losing battle. That's why, whenever they gain power the best they can offer is a few offsets to ameliorate the effects of the system. This, of course, never matches their campaign rhetoric which inevitably leaves people angry and disaffected. And the cheerleaders of those types of parties ( Marx would have called them Petty Bourgeois types) can't see the forest through the trees on this. When you abandon the working class and all you can really offer for "change" is peacemeal reforms, you have little or nothing to offer to begin with. This is why they lose and when they win, they maintain the economic status quo...Or blame someone else for their failures...

FDR didn't do too badly. And Canada has certainly benefitted from Medicare.

The difficulties today are more complex and diverse. But people like Corbyn and Sanders are pointing the way. It will be up to those younger to move the boulder back to the top.